Page 45 of What’s Left of Us

I shift to look at the back seat. This is clearly a newer vehicle, and I’m unsurprised at how clean he’s kept it. Atlas has always been a bit of a freak when it comes to cars. A messy room? Sure, that’s acceptable. A messy car? Absolutely not. It was one of many reasons he insisted on driving when we were in high school. My passenger seat had far too much clutter for his liking. And yeah, okay, I was also not the best driver.

In my defense, curbs stuck out way too far nowadays.

Atlas glances over at me, skeptical, like he’s gauging whether I’m teasing him.

“Really,” I say with a laugh. “I always figured you’d get something fancy, but this is pretty cool. I like this dash thing.”

I tap the screen in the middle of his dashboard. Now that I’m depressingly poor, to the point I don’t even have a car, these luxuries are foreign to me. It’s a bit silly, honestly. All of the cars we had when I was a teenager had heated seats and digital monitors and impressive sound systems.

“It’s weird to me that you’re rich,” I say as I snoop through Atlas’s playlist. He has good taste, damn him. I choose a song by Rainbow Kitten Surprise before slouching back in the passenger seat. It’s Called: Freefall plays through the speakers. “I mean, weird is probably the wrong word. It’s not like I thought everyone would lose their money when we did. It’s just…I don’t know.”

“Well, for the record, I’m not⁠—”

“Don’t you dare say I’m not rich, my parents are,” I say, making my voice as deep as it’ll go. “That’s the most rich-boy thing you could possibly say.”

Atlas laughs, one of those loud, goofy ones. I smile before I can stop myself. I quickly school my expression, then wonder why I’m trying so hard to sensor myself. I’ve already laid out the ground rules for this arrangement. I don’t need to be miserable the whole time. So what if we have fun and laugh together? So what if we do become friends?

“Well, it’s true,” Atlas says, laughing again. “I’ve only ever worked part-time, and that’s just during summers. I promise my part-time salary as a waiter did not pay for this.”

“You’re a waiter?” I try to imagine it: Atlas wearing black slacks and a button-up shirt, balancing a wide tray on one hand. In my head, he’s serving women in fancy cocktail dresses, and they’re flirting with him, because certainly they’ve never seen such a handsome server until now.

“At Creed’s, over the summers.” Atlas looks at me, brows furrowed. “You didn’t know?”

Creed’s isn’t a fancy restaurant. No, it’s a little place in our hometown with a specialty of fish and chips and bacon cheeseburgers. Atlas was more likely wearing a plain T-shirt and cargo shorts at that job. The tips were probably good anyway. Creed’s is right on the lake, and tourists from all over come in on their boating days.

“I was very strategic in not knowing things about you,” I admit. Embarrassment flares through my cheeks, but I keep going. “Some things, like where you went to college, were inevitable. My mom knew I didn’t want to talk about you, so I avoided most of it.”

“Ah.” It’s a quiet exhale. I shift in my seat, looking out at the tree line. Just when I’m wondering if I shouldn’t have been that honest, Atlas continues. “I tried that for a while. And by a while, I mean, a few months at most. By the time we hit Phoebe’s wedding, I was something of a Violet expert.”

“Oh yeah?” I say with a surprised laugh. Heat spirals through me, down low in my stomach, but I ignore it. I rotate again, this time facing him. “That must have been boring.”

“Not at all.” Atlas strums his fingers against the wheel, a slow grin spreading over his face. “I learned that you were studying education. That you volunteered at the library during summers, teaching kids how to play instruments. Very sweet, by the way. I knew you liked hiking. That you’d attempted fishing, but it didn’t sound like that lasted long.”

“Wow. You were, like, a proper stalker.” I smile at him, just to make sure he knows I’m joking. “And in my defense, fishing isn’t nearly as picturesque as it looks in videos. It’s boring. Nothing bit all day. I was just standing on the shore like a loser, and my line kept getting snagged in the rocks. It was honestly the worst.”

“It’s better from a boat,” Atlas says. He turns on his blinker, checking his blind spot before changing lanes. “I’ll take you next summer. Make sure you’ve got the right bait. A decent rod.”

“What, you’re an expert fisherman now?”

He barks out a laugh.

“No, but I can learn.”

“You’re going to learn how to fish, just so you can teach me how to fish?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“Because surely you have better things to do than teach your old neighbor how to fish.”

“I have precisely nothing better to do than hang out with you.” Atlas opens a wide palm, gesturing to the open road in front of us. The interstate has winded far enough from the coast that we can no longer consistently see the ocean. It’s mostly trees now, with the occasional stretch of buildings. “Exhibit A. I am driving you to Cannon Beach so that we can…What are we going to do there, by the way?”

“I don’t know.” I grab my backpack from my feet and rummage through its contents. I have a small supply of road trip snacks, a half-empty water bottle, and all my clothes stuffed into the main pocket. Nat’s folder of bucket lists is in the middle pouch. I retrieve it, even though I’ve long memorized every item. “All it says is ‘road trip to Cannon Beach’.”

I twist the paper in his direction as proof, but he doesn’t take his eyes off the road. He does smile though.

“I looked up pictures. It’s nice. I got us a rental right down by the water.”

Atlas took care of the reservation earlier in the week after I admitted I hadn’t made one. It took an annoying amount of effort to get him to let me pay him back. Never mind the fact it was his own money from the envelope he’d gifted me.